Humorless Feminism Alert

Writing for National Review online, Judith Kleinfeld quotes selectively from the transcript of a recent Education Sector debate on the boy crisis to criticize my arguments against the "boy crisis" hype. Here's a quote from Kleinfeld's piece:

The moderator, Ruth Wattenberg, editor of the American Educator, opened the discussion with a statement from a time warp, “I promise no matter how aggressive or disruptive [the two male panelists] get, I will not neglect Sara [the author of a report dismissing the problems of boys].”

Sara Mead testily replied, “I hope I’m not being called on first because you don’t think I can hold my own!”

There you have it. It’s still all about women. It’s still about men oppressing women. They just don’t get it. “Change blindness” — that’s what psychologists call this dangerous cognitive error.

Wow! The NRO crowd must take that "humorless feminist" stereotype seriously. Cuz, even allowing my brilliant comic timing may not be so clear in transcript, it boggles the mind how anyone could see this exchange as anything other than a joke--maybe a relatively lame one, but a joke nonetheless.

Kleinfeld has to seize on this silly exchange because the actual reasons that I argue we should be cautious embracing "boy crisis" hype have nothing to do with "men oppressing women." Rather than falling, boys' achievement has actually increased over time on a host of measures. There are some places where that's not the case, and even where it's rising, boys' achievement isn't rising fast enough or as fast as that of girls. But that doesn't discount the fact that boys are doing better than in the past in many ways.

More significantly, I'm concerned that generalized fears about a boy crisis distract attention from the groups--students with disabilities, poor and minority youngsters of both genders (although the problems facing boys in these groups are more pronounced)--who suffer from much more significant educational gaps. And I'm concerned that a lot of explanations and solutions being peddled for the boy crisis are based on ideological agendas, misinformation, and little hard research--exactly the recipes for goofy educational practices and bad curricula that have been undermining our education system for years. There are perfectly good reasons to be concerned about the impacts of the boy crisis hype and some of its practitioners' recommendations for boys, leave girls out of it for a moment.

Its been fascinating--and disappointing--to me to see how conservatives, who are generally skeptical of conferring victim status, and critical of untested new educational ideas, seem to embrace both so uncritically when the "victims" are boys and the education "innovations" include single sex schools and implementing gender stereotypes in the classroom.